In a previous article I discussed the topic of what a domain is actually worth and suggested that the great majority are actually worthless. So the questions that needs to be asked is why and how can we price domains effectively to maximise their sale potential.

So let’s open up the stock item sales model of domains. This is where you have a lot of keyword related domains and are wanting to sell 1% of them each year for some average amount. This business model was first pioneered by Fabulous (remember them?) and Buy domains (now owned by Godaddy).

We’re going to use a really simple case study to help us understand how to price domains using this model. Let’s imagine I have a 1,000 domains that cost me $10/year to register. My cost is going to be $10,000 per year (ignoring my time for now).

If I want to make 100% return on my investment, then I will need to do $20,000 in revenue for the year. If I think I can sell 1% of the domains each year (ie. 10 domains) then what is my domain sale price? Pretty simple, it’s $20,000 divided by 10 domains which is $2,000 per domain.

Since stock item domains typically sell for $1,000 each then it looks like my price of $2,000 is a little aggressive. It just so happens that in order to satisfy the price point of $1,000 I will then need to do a 2% stock turn or sell 20 domains per year.

Raising investment money is often seen as the “holy grail” of many budding entrepreneurs. After all, once you have the investment then the worlds your oyster! This couldn’t be further from the truth.

A number of years ago I had a business partner that was absolutely convinced that our company needed to go and raise some capital. I told him that he could go and try doing that if he wanted to…..and I would just grow the business. In the end he didn’t raise the capital and we still had a successful business.

I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to raising capital. It’s the old cliché, “When you need capital you can’t get it and when you don’t need capital investors want to throw it at you.”

Let’s imagine you have one of those incredible businesses where you believe an investor would have to be crazy to not invest. A common practice for VC’s at any level is to believe your “conservative” cash flows and then add a ratchet to the shareholders agreement.